Tree planting

We will soon be planting trees! VERY soon in fact, in Week 10 (the final week of term)!

We will be walking down to plant our trees first thing on Monday morning (Monday 8 July) and we'd love to have parents along to keep us safe along the road, and to help us plant our trees - the soil is tough and the spades are heavy for little hands :) Pre-schoolers are very welcome to join in the fun provided that they are carefully supervised at all times by their parents :)

We hope to be back in time for morning tea. Please let Miss Driver know if you are able to come along to support us :)

Term 2, Week 9

Thanks again to all students for the excellent behaviour and work habits in Room 3 last week – it is unusual to be swapping teachers so often, and it’s great to see heads down hard at work J There were lots of impressively juicy stories full of onomatopoeia, and we loved our bear hunt singalong story. We were also very excited about the magic “rocket” (tea bag) experiment that we saw on Monday with Dr Phil (also known as Miss Driver’s Dad) and we were astonished to see the rocket lift off before the landing surface caught on fire!

A big thank you also to Mrs Eades who is doing a fabulous job teaching with Mr Neal in Room 3 – Mrs Eades will be in twice more this week (Tuesday and Wednesday) as Miss Driver is engaged in school and cluster science planning and courses. Once again we look forward to gymnastics, rugby, kapa haka, and a training session with Janice Oliver from Sport Tasman. We’ll be writing about and making some art to celebrate the crisp and frosty winter, and we are VERY excited about the Big, Sad, Wolf show coming to school on Wednesday.

Please note that a large number of children are yet to pay their $4 to the school office for this show. In order for all children to be able to attend it is essential that we pay the performers! If payment by Wednesday is not possible, please see Miss Driver or Mrs Eades to confirm that payment will be made as soon as can be :) This show comes very well reviewed and is a part of our literacy programme.

Finally, learning journals and (for some) National Standards reports go home this Friday. We are proud to show our families what we have been learning in maths, topic, art and fitness, so please take the time to read these carefully and give us some feedback on our learning :)

Term 2, Week 8

Thank you to all students for the sensible choices made during our last rainy week – I hope that everyone kept snug and warm at home!  We had a super time with our new teacher Mr Neal and we especially enjoyed his guitar playing – we look forward to more singing sessions! We also did a lot of jumping and landing as we began our gymnastics programme, printed some pretty peacocks, and got stuck into some fractions.

This week in Room 3 we are are going to explore a new language feature called (big word!) onomatopoeia – squishy, crunchy, squelchy words that sound like the thing that they describe. We are going on a story book Bear Hunt, and putting our physical skills to the test with more gymnastics and a rugby training session (the first of two) on Thursday. We will take a break from our usual programme to look at some science experiments on Tuesday afternoon, and we look forward to kapa haka on Thursday.

This week Miss Driver is very busy too and we will welcome back Mrs Heather Eades on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, as Miss Driver will be engaged with the school Enviroteam and attending workshops. Thank you for making Mrs Eades feel so welcome – she always looks forward to her days in Room 3 with our fabulous children :)

Discovery time with Mr Neal

We had funny dressing up with Mr Neal in discovery time today! A big thank you also to Maya's mum who has been sharing this fun time with us :)

Term 2, Week 7

First of all, a massive thank you to those families who came to watch us taking part in the junior school cross country last Tuesday. We had a fabulous time in the sunshine and everyone put in a top effort. If you have not seen them already, there are a couple of photos on our blog. Well done on all your hard work Room 3, your running technique was excellent!

We have also been looking at our topic, Same, Same But Different, and thinking about possible similarities and differences between ourselves and people living in other parts of the world and people living here in NZ who may have come from, or have friends or family living in, different parts of the world. You can see our brainstorming on the wall in the orange corner. We have been inspired by some picture books we’ve been reading about children around the world, by mapping out the family origins of our own Room 3 learners, and by a youtube clip “if the world were a village of 100 people” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtYjUv2x65g&safe=active We’re coming to terms with what a broad concept “culture” really is!

This week in Room 3 we welcome Mr Mitchell Neal who will be with us for the next three weeks. Mr Neal is a student at the University of Canterbury with many musical talents! We also look forward to a visit from Mrs Heather Eades on Thursday while Miss Driver is on release. On Thursday and Friday we’ll begin our gymnastics programme with a focus on safe technique for springs and landing, and we’ll soldier on with literacy and numeracy, beginning a new unit on fractions – such fun! Tuesday will see us finger printing peacocks, and of course we look forward to kapa haka each Thursday. Here’s to another fabuous week in Room 3! 

Junior school cross country

A huge congratulations to everyone at Birchwood School who ran in the cross country today! Room 3 ran the junior course around the field, and had a great time slipping and sliding in the dew and the mud - there were no major casualties :)

Our place winners were:

Boys - Jesse, Cade, Joseph
Girls - Daniella, Saskia, Mikaela

With the rest of us hot on their heels!

Term 2, Week 6

Let’s begin with a huge thanks to all families for the amazing, tasty treats that were shared last Friday – we were very sorry to say goodbye to Mr Harvey, but we had a wonderful five weeks and it was a great send off!

Luckily we’ll also be very distracted this week as we race right on into our junior school cross country. We’ll be running a short course here at Birchwood at 11.30am on Tuesday 11 June. Parents are most welcome to come along, however please follow the directions of the teachers at the marshalling area on where to stand – we LOVE that you are here to support your children, but distracted children sometimes head off towards parents (or stop altogether) rather than race to the finish line (and/or miss the start of their races) :)

We’re also going to be intensifying our topic focus as we take apart world maps looking for countries of interest, watch cultural clips from around the world, and develop some inquiry questions of our own. On that note, a reminder to families please to make payment for the Spirit of Polynesia show ($4.50 if you have not already paid), and for the Big Sad Wolf show ($4) directly to the office. The children adore these shows and it is important to support their learning in the visual and perfomance arts, not to mention literacy.

Finally, we are still collecting plastic soft drink bottles with the “star” or “flower” shaped base for an upcoming snowflake printing project. If you have any bottles to donate please bring them in to Room 3 this week :) So far, we only have a couple. 

Farewell Mr Harvey!

We were VERY sad today to say goodbye to our good friend Mr Harvey. Mr Harvey has been teaching us in Room 3 over the last 5 weeks, and we have had an absolutely wonderful time together. 

Today we said goodbye with some funny stories about the things we like about Mr Harvey, and we shared a special lunch (a huge thanks to all of the wonderful parents who made such a range of tasty treats for us - it was an amazing party spread!).

We hope that Mr Harvey will come back to visit us sometime, and we wish him all the best - he is going to be a fabulous teacher!! 

Term 2, Week 5

Thanks to all for an awesome – if somewhat frosty! – week. Luckily we had our hockey and cross country running training sessions to warm us up! Our skip counting is racing along (it is SUCH a fast way to solve problems with bigger numbers, for example 35 (7 lots of 5) plus 15 (3 lots of 5) …), and we wrote some really ridiculous silly sentences as we finally filled our bright brains with ideas about alliteration.

This week is a short week of course and it is also our final week with Mr Harvey (who will be away on Tuesday for a Rippa tournament with several Birchwood teams). We will miss him very much as he has really made learning fun in Room 3, and has given us a lot of help with our work! The good news is that before he leaves us we’re going to have an awesome time together making paper bag princess prints and rubbings (using cardboard blocks, string and rollers!), and we’ve still got buddy maths, jump jam and kapa haka to look forward to.

Finally, we are collecting plastic soft drink bottles (we would prefer the smaller sizes, but larger ones are also welcome!) with the “star” or “flower” shaped base for an upcoming snowflake printing project. If you have any bottles to donate please bring them in to Room 3 this week :)